More Recovery Readings - May

[bluidkiti]

May 16

You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
More majestic than a cardinal, as shining as a pyx. --Gustave Flaubert
What in the world is a pyx? If we don't have an expert nearby, we'll have to look in a book. There we'll find it defined, explained, fixed. Now what in the world is love? It doesn't live in a tree or a book, so where in the world do we look? Can we find love in the house, maybe swept under the rug? Can we know the feel of it in our hands, see it written on the lines of faces we know? Does it make a sound--maybe laugh and cry? Does it know how to speak, form words carefully, write letters? Is it only written on the heart?
We find love inside us, and our love seeks itself out in others. We find it in the familiar footfall of a brother or sister, the sound of a parent's voice in the next room, and yet, too often we don't express it directly. When we do, our love thrives in all we do together.
What does love have to do with the ordinary facts of life?


You are reading from the book Touchstones.
The work will teach you how to do it. --Estonian proverb
We learn this spiritual program as we learned to ride a bike or to swim. We could never get it from reading a book. We only learn it by doing it and by following the example of others. As we first entered the program, we may have thought, "Oh I understand this. In twelve meetings I'll have it licked."
Many men have had difficulty trusting, so we try to understand everything before we get involved in it. But as long as we try to figure it out first, we remain on the outside looking in. Doing the practical things in this program - taking inventories and making amends, praying for guidance from our Higher Power, carrying the message to others, selecting a sponsor, will teach us the essentials for spiritual recovery.
Today, I will take the risk of learning by living the spiritual life.


You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world. --Dorothy Dix
The storms of our lives benefit us like the storms that hit our towns and homes and wash clean the air we breathe. Our storms bring to the surface the issues that plague us. Perhaps we still fear a job with responsibilities. Perhaps we still struggle with the significant other persons in our lives. Possessiveness is a particular storm that often haunts our progress. Storms force us to acknowledge these liabilities that continue to stand in our way, and acknowledgment is the step necessary to letting go.
Recovery is a whole series of storms, storms that help to sprout new growth, storms that flush clean our own clogged drains. The peace that comes after a storm is worth singing about.
Each storm can be likened to a rung on the ladder to wholeness, the ladder to full membership in the healthy human race. The storms make climbing tough, but we get strength with each step. The next storm will be more easily weathered.
If today is a stormy day, let me remember it will freshen the air I breathe.


You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
Self Love
I woke up this morning and I had a hard time for a while, said one recovering man. Then I realized it was because I wasn't liking myself very much. Recovering people often say: I just don't like myself. When will I start liking myself?
The answer is: start now. We can learn to be gentle, loving, and nurturing with ourselves. Of all the recovery behaviors were striving to attain, loving ourselves may be the most difficult, and the most important. If we are habitually harsh and critical toward ourselves, learning to be gentle with ourselves may require dedicated effort.
But what a valuable venture!
By not liking ourselves, we may be perpetuating the discounting, neglect, or abuse we received in childhood from the important people in our life. We didn't like what happened then, but find ourselves copying those who mistreated us by treating ourselves poorly.
We can stop the pattern. We can begin giving ourselves the loving, respectful treatment we deserve.
Instead of criticizing ourselves, we can tell ourselves we performed well enough.
We can wake up in the morning and tell ourselves we deserve a good day.
We can make a commitment to take good care of ourselves throughout the day.
We can recognize that were deserving of love. We can do loving things for ourselves.
We can love other people and let them love us.
People who truly love themselves do not become destructively self centered. They do not abuse others. They do not stop growing and changing. People who love themselves well, learn to love others well too. They continually grow into healthier people, learning that their love was appropriately placed.
Today, I will love myself. If I get caught in the old pattern of not liking myself, I will find a way to get out.


I begin my day with quiet time, finding peace and serenity in my mediation. I carry those feelings with me wherever I am. If anything happens to disturb this peace, I can stop and spend a few minutes with my breath and regain my serenity. --Ruth Fishel

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Journey to the Heart

What You Believe Is What You Will See

We can all things into play by what we believe, what we say, what we envision, what we speak. This is one of the powers we’re learning about.

Much of this dance of life, this universal rhythm, is out of our control. But while we don’t choreograph it, we can work within the part that is ours, with the power that is ours. We do this by what we believe. If we believe that we have to fight the entire world, that we’re separate and apart, and that for the most part those we meet will be our enemies, out to hurt us, than that will most probably be true.

Our beliefs about what we deserve and who God is will change as we journey through our adventures. But there is also much we can do now to participate in changing our beliefs and creating a more desirable world for ourselves.

What are your beliefs? Listen to yourself. Listen to what you think, what you say, how you react. Listen to yourself talk about other people, about what life is really like, and about what always happens to you. Listen to what you say about what you can and cannot do. What you hear yourself say is what you believe. And that is probably what you are used to perceiving as happening.

Try believing something different. Try asking the universe and God to help you change and correct your beliefs. Take an active part in creating your world. Say your new beliefs. Say them aloud. Write them down.

Believe that you deserve love. Believe that universal love is there for you. And you will begin to see exactly what you believe.

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More language of letting go

Only you can assess what to do

It was about my fiftieth skydive. I was determined to master this spinning thing. When my turn came, I went to the door, pulled myself outside, then gave myself the count. Ready, set, go. I released my hold and let myself fall into the air.

At first, I fell stable, belly down. Then that dang spinning thing started. I tried to correct my body posture. That didn’t help. The last time this had happened, I had spent so much time trying to correct the problem, I had lost awareness of my altitude. I had gotten obsessed with the problem and lost track of time– not a good thing to do on the ground, and even worse to do while falling through the air.

I remembered my jump master’s words: What are you going to do, spend the rest of your life trying to gain control? Instead of making further attempts to solve the problem, I would stop it now. By pulling,, I yanked my rip cord. Instead of hearing that whooshing sound, the one the parachute makes when it opens correctly, I heard a heavy thud. I looked up. I had been spinning so fast when I opened that I had a knotted mess of line twists and a wad of material over my head.

I had experienced line twists before– a few twists that could be kicked out with a little effort. This was different. It looked like a Chinese braid over my head.

This just isn’t working, I thought. I pulled my cutaway handle, freeing the knotted mass of stuff over my head, then immediately pulled my reserve parachute. It opened sweetly and immediately. I looked at my altimeter. I was at nine-thousand feet. This was going to be a long ride down.

About five minutes later, I floated back to the ground. I threw my parachute over my shoulder and tromped back to the student room. When asked what happened, I explained my story. It was full of ” should’s.” I should have been able to stop spinning. I shouldn’t have opened so high. I apologized for what I had done and for the fact that my rented parachute, which I cut away so high, was going to be tough to find.

“This wasn’t an ideal situation,” said the manager of the school. “But it’s your life. Only you can decide what to do to save it. It’s up to you and you alone to decide what’s right to do.”

Some situations aren’t ideal. Maybe we shouldn’t be in them in the first place and maybe we should have known better. But the facts are what they are. Don’t let shame stop you from taking care of yourself. What are you going to do?

Talk to other people. Get opinions. Read books. But it’s your life– your relationship, your financial situation, your job, your home. It’s up to you to decide what’s best for you. You’re the one who will ultimately live with the results of any decision you make. Assess the situation, and decide what’s right for you.

Take responsibility for your decisions and for how best to live your life.

God, help me stop waiting for others to approve of what I do or don’t do. Guide me in my decision-making and help me trust the choices I make.

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Looking Deeply
The Good in All

by Madisyn Taylor

We can see the good in all when we come from a place of serenity and looking deeply within.


Sometimes we find it difficult to see the good in people, places, or situations that aren’t to our liking. We focus on the things we don’t like in our lives as a way of fueling our efforts to create change. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, and it is one way we make progress. However, if we get too caught up in this way of looking at the world, we lose touch with our ability to sit back and simply say yes to everything on our plates, which is the true starting point for all successful activity. Sometimes what we really need is to encourage ourselves to look deeply into all things in our lives to see the inherent goodness at the heart of everything.

At the core of this inquiry is the practice of unconditional acceptance, which can be scary because we feel as if we are being asked not to change the things we don’t like. But when we think this way, we are still operating on the surface of our lives. In order to feel the beauty and warmth of full acceptance, we have to be willing to sink deeper into the stratum underlying the external manifestation of our lives. This deeper place of being is the origin of all lasting change, yet its paradox is that when we are in it, we often don’t feel the need to change anything. From this place, we experience the pure beauty of the process of being alive, and we see that all things change in their own time. We don’t need to force anything. If there are things that we do need to change, from this place of serenity we create the shift easily, our hands guided by an energy that resides at the very center of our hearts.

In our active, goal-oriented culture, we learn to distrust stillness and to engage in busywork on the surface of life. This tendency can blind us to the good that lies at the heart of all things. But all we have to do to see again is stop for a moment, let go of our preconceptions and our agendas, and settle into the very center of our hearts, remembering that it is only from here that we can truly see. Published with permission from Daily OM

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A Day At A Time

Reflection For The Day

Many of us in The Program share the memory that we originally drank or used other chemicals to “belong,” to “fit in,” or to “be a part of the crowd.” Others of us fueled our addictions to “get in” — to feel, at least for a short time, that we fitted in with the rest of the human race. Sometimes, the chemicals had desired effect, temporarily assuaging our feelings of apartness. But when the chemicals’ effects wore off, we were left feeling more alone, more left out, more “different” than ever. Do I still sometimes feel that “my case is different?”

Today I Pray

God, may I get over my feeling of being “different” or in some way unique, of not belonging. It was this feeling that led me to my chemical use in the first place. It also kept me from seeing the seriousness of my addiction, since I thought “I am different. I can handle it.” May I now be aware that I do belong, to a vast fellowship of people like me. With every shared experience, my “uniqueness” is disappearing.

Today I Will Remember

I am not unique.

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One More Day

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this.
– Henry Ford

During these most devastating periods f our lives, it is hard to recognzie that we will, in the long run, benefit from the experience. As we live through painful or trying times when we are barely surviving, we certainly are not aware of growing or of learning something.

Yet, in the more quiet times of our lives, when we’re not in pain or just hanging on by a thread, we can see that , yes, I did learn this or, indeed, that event did force me to grow. Chronic illness is no different from other crises, and we are able to inventory ourselves and see healthier attitudes and stronger character as results of what we’ve experienced.

I will take time today to list the ways in which some “bad” experiences have helped me become a better or more mature person.